


Spirit Of Truth

by typhe



Series: Snowblind [3]
Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: AU, LHM, M/M, Power Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typhe/pseuds/typhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Stef is in a lot of trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spirit Of Truth

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for [macabre_monkey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre_monkey/pseuds/macabre_monkey)'s birthday - thanks to [Gildaurel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildaurel/pseuds/Gildaurel) for reminding me to archive it by picking up a detail and running. :P 
> 
> This is not likely to make any sense unless you've read the last chapter of [_Snowblind_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/304752); it's set _before_ part two of this series but oh what never mind.

"This is going to go fine, right?" Medren whispered to Stef. It was only the fiftieth time he'd asked, but he needed the reassurance.

Stefen nodded, but was barely paying attention to him, tapping the toes of his boots on the floor in a perfectly irritating fashion. Medren decided he was allowed to feel a little peeved. He'd gone out of his way to be there for Stef - Herald Shavri had wanted the hearing to be completely closed, and he'd had to sign something swearing to secrecy just to get himself in there. The covertness was unnerving; a falconer's glove used to handle a taloned problem, to ensure that no one beyond would know what the Circles had got their hands on or what they'd decide to do with it.

It being Stef.

 _Someone_ ought to be there to support Stef as he was formally questioned, and Medren hoped that Stef would have done the same for him (not that he would have been capable of ever getting into anything like this much trouble), though Stef was lately doing his best to make their friendship as strained as possible. 

Medren had sworn years ago that he'd always try to help his hapless roommate out of the many, many scrapes he somehow found himself in, but he'd never imagined those capers would come to this. It was the first time in decades that a Bard had been called up on the charge of misusing his Gift and questioned before representatives of both the Bardic and Heraldic Circles. He hadn't _believed_ it when Stefen had shown him the summons, and part of him still wanted to think it was simply a formality issued in response to the novelty of what Stefen claimed he had done. But Herald Shavri looked the wrong kind of formal; full Whites, rigid posture, and her face looked unpromisingly cold. Medren didn't know her other than by sight, but he suspected that the bitter winter had aged her; bones stood out on her cheeks, and she looked _dry_ , as if sapped from the inside. Well, her life was pretty hard these days, the more so for Vanyel being away. It wasn't often that she had to pick up the normal duties of the King's Own - not that anyone in their right minds would have allowed Van to chair this committee anyway.

Stef had speculated that she might still be bearing a grudge against him for so readily up-and-leaving Randale to travel north at Vanyel's side; before that he'd been high in her favour, which had perhaps only made that descent all the steeper. Stefen was back to serving Randale and also reacquainting his indispensable fingers with every damned pie in the Palace, but each time Medren had run into him at what passed for the Court, he had seemed to be hanging there by a bare thread of attention, his words pretty and puppetlike. His mind was clearly elsewhere.

He'd been _weird_ since he'd got back from the north; whenever he wasn't working he was a bundle of emotional stress, much worse than he'd been when Van went to Rethwallen, and he'd been erratic company - seeking Medren out for moody drinking sessions between disappearing every evening for days, claiming to be working on songs and then never producing so much as a note, cancelling lunches and sparring sessions and then rescheduling them on a whim. He seemed to spend fair days skulking in the gardens and foul ones reading his way through the Mindhealers' library. He hadn't talked much about anything but Vanyel, and when he did, little of it had made sense and he had often fallen silent in mid-sentence. Stef even _looked_ strange - thin and pale as a birch twig, and his mannerisms had acquired some of that unsettled alertness that Medren had only ever seen in combat veterans - _and I can't contemplate the notion of Stef being a combat veteran_. He didn't get cold any more; at this time of year he'd usually be huddling under a few layers of woollen clothing, but today he wore only regular Scarlets over a linen shirt thin enough to see through - warmed instead by some fire that the north had ignited in his brain. One morning last week, a letter had arrived and left him both glowing and temperamental, as if fixated on a wonderful and insoluble problem, and he'd spent all day twitching like a string full of oscillating words.

Medren had hoped, as recently as this morning, that having this whole spectacle out of the way would help Stef return to his usual self, but watching him now - sat beside him on a bare wooden chair, staring absently at the walls and occasionally flicking his eyes over the eight people assembled to judge him - his impressions ran unexpectedly, almost frighteningly counter to that. Because as far as he could judge, after years of knowing Stef well and observing each of his well-concealed moods and fancies, Stef _didn't care_ what was going on.

Even though Stef's judges held a blade to the throat of every future he'd ever fought and scrabbled for.

 _Maybe he's gone irretrievably insane_ , Medren pondered. _He's always had the energy of madness - guess it took a while for the more unfortunate symptoms to show up. Going doo-lally for my uncle must have been one of them._

He took in the faces behind the horseshoe table, counting the ones he recognised. _Breda, she'll have some mercy on him._ Assuming they let her. Dellar, Medren had _much_ less confidence in, as the Dean of the Collegium was touchy about the Bards' reputation and if he thought Stefen was a genuine threat to that, he'd give no quarter. The other two Bards, he wasn't sure of. Heralds were easier to read (or simply worse at not allowing themselves to be read); leaving aside Shavri, Medren was holding out hope that the other three would be at least sympathetic - all of Stefen's dubious actions had been done to save Vanyel's life, and surely they would see the worth in that?

Herald Shavri didn't need to call the assemblage to order; it was already far too quiet. "Bard Stefen," she acknowledged, and he stood. _Should Stef bow?_ Stef didn't seem to know, and he remained upright, hands clasped behind his back, waiting for her word. "Be seated. I'm going to ask that Herald Tantras -" she gestured to the man on her right, who Medren suspected of harbouring kindness, "- to invoke a first-stage Truth Spell over you for the duration of these proceedings. I trust the second stage will not be required." _Now there's a pretty threat._ "You are of course not permitted to use your Gift here." Stef sat, and nodded in polite understanding, saving his words for the questioning. There was a pause while Tantras waved a hand in invocation; Medren wondered if any of the Heralds could see anything, or feel anything, to indicate the presence of the spell. Medren definitely couldn't, and Stef didn't so much as twitch.

Shavri glanced down at the notes in front of her - of which there were many - and then coldly back up at Stef. "We've all read Herald Vanyel's report, and your own written response to my queries regarding that report. In plain terms, he says that you took to using your Bardic Gift to attack the minds of others in combat. Is this true?"

"Yes - that is, to attack their emotions."

Shavri waved off the fine distinction. "You did this at your own instigation, and of your own volition."

"Initially yes."

"Initially?"

"I later conferred about it with Hyrryl - the matriarch of the _kyree_ clan resident in Wendwinter." There was an awkward silence in which Medren caught a couple of smiles at the young bard's fancifulness, smiles which rapidly turned into chilled gapes of surprise when they noted Tantras's steady eyes. _No, you fools, he's not making this up. He really does talk to_ kyree _. Bothered by that, much?_

"You describe the first incident as being in retaliation to a sudden attack...?" He nodded. "And you simply sang in terror as soon as the attack began? Without any planning or premeditation?"

Stefen hesitated, as if unsure of the truth himself. One slip, one white lie, and Shavri would surely order Tantras to invoke the second stage of the spell and any control Stef had over the proceedings would be wrenched from his hands. Medren could almost see him flicking through words in his mind, as if looking for one key among a ring of dozens. "I didn't plan it but neither was it the first time it had crossed my mind."

There was a slight stir. "Really? And when did it first cross your mind?"

Stefen coloured slightly, and he turned to the Bards' side of the table. "In legends. When I was first taught what a Bard was and what it meant to be Gifted, I heard of Bards long ago whose songs could control the wills of others. I would imagine that I'm not the only one of us who ever thought on those words and -"

"I didn't summon you here for speculations about others." _Well, damn._ Stef _could_ have got a couple of the Bards there - reminding them of stories _they'd_ told him, stories that Medren was sure were meant to instil in apprentices a sense of responsibility about the great potential of their power to move people, but which must have set many an ambitious child thinking; _I wish I could do that_. But Shavri wasn't letting him shift the blame. "So you cite acts of legend as impetus for what you did? That sounds...arrogant." 

_Arrogant meaning dangerous meaning Stef is in so much trouble._ This wasn't going well.

"No, it's not arrogance," he replied mildly. "Valdemar appoints bards to keep legends precisely because the information we keep in them is meant to be used. Those songs simply wouldn't have been recorded and passed down to me if they hadn't been of value."

"You found the value of what you were taught in doing harm to the minds of others?"

"I see value in raising what weapons I have against Valdemar's enemies -"

Shavri spoke over him immediately. " _This_ is precisely the point at issue. The Bardic Gift is _not a weapon_."

Stefen remained perfectly silent and still; anything he might have done or said would have only detracted from the response he offered by simply existing.

Dellar cleared his throat, as if realising that Shavri had dived into a verbal pit. Medren knew him to be the kind of man who had, by always looking quite open and approachable, made himself incredibly hard to read, but he suspected that the very _idea_ of what Stef had done upset Dellar profoundly. "Stefen, whatever other creative knowledge you might have acquired while studying at the Collegium -" There was an art to saying 'creative' like it was a bad thing, "- I am quite sure you learned the Bardic Code. Tell me under what circumstances you are permitted to use your Gift."

Stef's response was automatic. "To enhance a performance, or at the King's orders, or to help someone who needs help."

"And what part of that code did you think covered the use of your Gift to enchant and slaughter others?" _He's trying to shock him_ , Medren realised. _Like Stef was a naughty apprentice who didn't understand what he'd done wrong. He has_ no idea _what Stef's turned into._

Did anyone? Did he?

Stef straightened his back and Medren could almost feel his control relax, the wavering emotional life returning to his soft words at a moment where it might be to his favour. "Herald Vanyel needed my help, and I had none other to give. He would have been killed if I hadn't done this."

There was a long, reflective silence that was broken by Bard Chadran, whose face had coloured with fury. "You twist not only your Gift but also the words of the code. We help others as a _means_ , not an end. The code _exists_ because Bards are not Foreseers - we cannot rely on the justifications of future consequence to judge the ethics of what we do. You can't just do something awful and hope that someone will be helped by it."

Shavri scowls her agreement. "Quite. We don't dispute what you achieved, but how. What if you hadn't succeeded? Then what would you have said of it?"

Stef picked up his blasé poise again as if he had never dropped it. "If I hadn't succeeded, we would have been too busy fighting a war against the northlands to discuss it - and I'm pretty sure I'd be dead."

 _Too flippant. When did he start sounding so careless about his own damned life?_ Shavri leaned back in her chair with a hand to her temple, and though she maintained the same stony expression Medren thought he felt a crack beneath its surface. Carding at the thinning hair above her ears, she looked around the semicircle. "Does anyone else have any questions?"

"I do," volunteered Bard Dara. Medren hid a frown - she had a reputation for saying the most provocative things, and he remembered Stef's account of her contribution to his own promotion hearing a year ago. "It's all very well trying to figure out the ins and outs and shoulds and shouldn'ts of this thing, but I feel like I'm in a poor position to judge your performance when I haven't heard it."

Shavri blinked slowly. Breda glanced up at the ceiling, as if it had been on her mind but she'd been hoping no one would be impolite enough to say it. _Trust Dara._ Stef held his calm. "Begging your pardon, but Herald Shavri ordered me not to use my Gift during this hearing -"

Shavri sensed weakness, went for it. "I can make an exception for the presentation of evidence." 

Stef suddenly looked extremely worried. "Uh. Obviously it's going to be upsetting -"

"Which is precisely why we are questioning you."

"It also won't by any means be a replication of what happened. I was using a collective sound then, including the voices of several _kyree_ mages who had instilled it with energy that I could direct. Just by myself here - I'm only human," Stef said; a statement that when it must be spoken created room for its own doubt. "And it'll be quite artificial in comparison, emotionally I mean." Medren knew the Bards would all understand that - most emotions one ever projected were to some degree faked, though one always had real memories and real experience to draw upon - but Stef clarified for the sake of the Heralds. "You have to understand, I did this when I had no idea if I'd even see Vanyel again. I was really, _really_ terrified and upset the whole time I was doing it. Just putting on that feeling now simply won't be the same."

Medren wondered if Stef even noticed the dismissive note in his own voice. _Oh fuck, you fucking admitted it in passing like it was nothing to you. You just_ told _these people who_ rule your life _that you're not scared of them one_ bit - _they don't_ matter _to you, they're not even on the_ scale _of things you care about._ He caught Breda's eyes, and read them all too easily. _At least someone's scared for you right now, you lunatic._

"Get on with it," said Shavri testily.

Stef nodded, and bent his head. When he raised it again, his eyes were closed and he'd begun the steady breathing pattern of the trance state he used to awaken the depths of his powers. Medren saw the Bards watching Stefen curiously, the Heralds a little less so - many Heralds used trance states at times, but no Bard did so except Stefen. Stef must have got used to having to teach himself things - no one else understood what he could do well enough to provide guidance. _Not so unlike my uncle - cursed to be different, and to make his own rules._

Stefen began to sing a simple minor scale.

Medren wanted to run and to scream but _he couldn't because the sound was pouring in no escape from it, hands to his ears and still it came through his bones and his blood, hungry and hateful and sated by nothing but death -_

When he came back to his senses, he found he wasn't the only one who looked rigid inside and out, mouths shaping unreal fear. Dara was shaking her head slowly, clearly wishing she hadn't asked. "I apologise," said Stefen with hesitant grace.

 _You apologise?_ Medren found that, without intending to, he'd slid his chair a foot further from Stefen's than it had been. And he felt sick at that, more so than from the twisted power - two weeks of tolerating his friend's new absurdities and _now_ he'd finally let Stefen push them apart? _That's what_ Van _always did, for hell's sake. He knew that carting around that much power weirded people out, and he quit expecting that he could have friends like a normal person. Gods, Stef, how much does having all that power scare_ you _?_

He could feel melancholy even looking at Stef - Stef, who'd been a scrawny kid he'd looked out for, Stef whose only crime had ever been being too curious for his own good. _He's_ not _a damn monster_ , he wished he could remind them all, but it was hard enough to remind himself. There wasn't a face in the room that didn't look horrified. Stef himself seemed resigned to judgement now, as if knowing that any support he might have had had just been washed away by the ill wave of his sound.

"I think that was an adequate demonstration of your powers." Shavri's voice was barely more than a strained whisper.

Stef frowned. "If it's any comfort, I don't think that's the only way to - well, it's about affecting deep impulse, and terror's not the only emotion that can have that controlling sway over someone. It was just the only one I had. I've not yet tested the force of any of the less unpleasant possibilities one works with in music that run equally deep - love, aggression, patriotism -" He broke off suddenly, as if noticing that his meandering into technicalities was not helping his case, at all. At least it was a part of Stef that Medren still recognised - the part that looked at people and contemplated where best to put the lever.

Shavri looked far beyond appalled. "Perhaps you aren't aware that using a communicative Mind-Gift offensively isn't something the Heraldic Circle have _ever_ condoned?"

"Then I would humbly ask that you judge me as though I were a Herald who had used a Gift such as Thoughtsensing or Empathy in offensive combat," replied Stefen calmly.

And it could almost have passed for humble, but Medren could hear the screaming subtext beneath it; _oh, I bet my uncle's admitted to it before now._ And knowing Van, he'd have had fits of guilt about it for years afterwards and most _definitely_ confessed what he'd done to the King's Own. And here was Stefen knowing this fact, abusing it, meekly referring to it, and all without a semblance of Heraldic conscience to call his own.

Shavri twitched at his infuriating logic, and glanced darkly at the rest of them. "We'll judge you as we see fit. Have we asked enough questions?"

"I have one more," Tantras said, voice shaking slightly. "One I've found useful before now at hearings where premeditation is a potential issue." He turned to Stefen. "Tell me, now you've had a little time and now we've given you a few things to think about -" He gave Shavri a loaded glare. "Do you regret what you did?"

Medren caught the doubled potential of his words. Some guilty people felt real remorse, others simply regretted being caught, or resented the fact that their grand schemes were against the law. Tantras was inviting Stefen to proffer either form of self-recrimination, and a good deal might depend on which one he came forth with.

If either.

Stef's eyes closed for half a moment, as if in bold surrender to the spirit of truth. "No. I don't. I hated causing all that bloodshed, but it saved my lifebonded and I _can't_ regret that. So sentence me. Anything you want to do to me, take from me - it's not going to come close to what I would've lost if I'd simply left Van to die. Judge me as you will, I'll still have my bondmate."

Tantras stared at Stefen in some mingled mixture of awe and profound disappointment. "Councillors, may I close the Truth Spell now?"

"Aye, we've heard enough," said Shavri on behalf of the unsettled assembly. "Bard Stefen, you're dismissed. I suggest you wait in the Council anteroom while we complete our deliberations."

 _Well_ , thought Medren glumly as they slunk out, _at least it won't take them very long to reach a verdict._

 

Breda stared at her once-ward's hunched back as he and Medren retreated so the deliberations could continue in due secrecy. _Oh Stefen, what have you become? What in the world made you think you could just say that?_ She was obviously not the only one who, even after feeling that awful power in action, had enough wits left to be taken aback by both the fervour and the content of Stefen's final words.

"Are they really _lifebonded_?" asked Dellar incredulously. Breda was privately glad she'd succeeded in keeping that piece of gossip from his ears; she'd thought Stef might prefer his superior not to know.

"Yes," replied Shavri. "Which means we can't accept Herald Vanyel's plea for clemency as an unbiased judgement." Herald Treven looked like he was about to protest. "I'm sure he intended to be fair-minded, but we must regard his report as prejudicial, just as we would any other testimony offered by one spouse in favour of another." 

The word startled more than a few people, and Breda could count herself as one of them. It was so bizarre as to be ridiculous - for years, it had been absurd to imagine Vanyel courting anyone, let alone dallying with a sprightly teenager who he had _nothing_ in common with except their love of music. Even now she was over her first misgivings, it still stunned her every time it crossed her mind. The gods had rarely made a stranger match, and for what?

To do impossible things together.

Those misgivings had been severe; right after Stefen had shyly informed her of whose bed he had taken to sleeping in, she'd downed three fingers of whiskey and summoned Vanyel to her rooms for a thorough earbashing; and once she was done telling him that effectively robbing her effective cradle was a godawful way to act out a midlife crisis even, especially, if it was all because he always wished he'd been a Bard himself, he had meekly informed her that he and Stefen were lifebonded and therefore his attempts to stop it happening had been for naught, and all he could do now was his damnedest to stop Stef from coming to harm because of their bond. His sincerity had slain all the words she'd had left, and she'd found herself trusting him to care for her wild child, likely more than he trusted himself; but she had never contemplated what Stefen might be prepared to do for Vanyel. A deep, disquieted shudder ran through her as she felt the imprint of that terrifying sound.

"I have to ask," said Treven tentatively. "I know the ultimate penalty open to us is to block Stefen's Bardic Gift and strip him of his rank. What I don't know is how that's done - what Mind-Gifts are required to carry out that sentence? If that's what it comes to, who would be capable of doing that?"

"You mean, apart from Vanyel?" _Oh Dara and her way with the obvious._ But it really _was_ that obvious; had any other Gifted Bard been proven to have gone rogue, Vanyel would have been the first person the Bardic Circle would turn to for both moral arbitration and enacting punishment.

Shavri pretended to ignore her. "I gather the block's enacted via something like a Thoughtsenser's permanent shield, but placed on the projective Empathic channel. I couldn't do it - I don't have that level of control, and not many of us can even see Empathic channels well enough." Shavri frowned, thinking on it, and Breda noted that she hadn't so much as mentioned her daughter, who had both required Gifts - perhaps they had argued about the topic already. "Tran, surely you -?"

"Order me to and I'll resign," Tantras said flatly. "Look, that Gift of his is _appalling_ and so is his state of mind, but I don't know how you can think he's done anything _wrong_. He had you bang to rights about the things Heralds do with Mind-Gifts in combat. There's not one Thoughtsenser who's ever been on a front line and not read someone's mind improperly at least once."

"It was deliberate, premeditated -"

"Have fun telling Vanyel your logic when he gets back." _Thank you_ , thought Breda fervently, as if in the hope that the handsome younger man would treat her improperly indeed. _Thank you thank you thank you._ "I know, this is about the ethics of method, not outcome. But given the circumstances? I think I can see room for an exception to the code here."

"What circumstances?" asked Dellar frostily. "You're talking about the kind of exception that might be required in a case of self-defence - but by Stefen's account he most often _engaged_ combat with this Gift - including in the incident Vanyel described in his report. And there wasn't a declaration of war in effect -"

"Doesn't mean there wasn't a war." Dara was good sometimes.

"Too true." That was Herald Joshel, who hadn't spoken up before; Breda was unsure of his sympathies. "The Council authorised Vanyel to take offensive action against Leareth's forces and that permission obviously extends to Stefen too. We're talking about a faction who'd murdered several Herald-Mages, and if they'd taken his lifebonded hostage..."

Shavri shook her head. "If something's outright wrong, doing it for a bondmate doesn't make it right. We can't blindly trust him to go out there and _break_ people with the Bardic Gift."

 _No_ , thought Breda bitterly, _that moral authority is reserved for Herald-Mages alone._

"He didn't kill anyone," pointed out Treven. "He just made people easier to kill without losing any of ours."

"That's ends again," said Chadran, who was seated beside Breda. "It's still repulsive and it's still against the code. I don't see how we can afford to take that combination of vast power and poor ethics lightly. Twenty years ago you all saw how much wrong can be done by too much power in the hands of a disaffected young man -"

"Tylendel Freylenne was a mage." Breda spoke the name because she knew no one else would. She thought she saw Treven, who was seated across from her, make a warding-sign under the table. "The Bardic Gift simply -"

"Isn't that dangerous?" Dellar threw his hands in the air. His shock at feeling that power had been palpable, and that shock had clung to him, making him seem small - perhaps simply awed to see a Gift he thought he understood completely turned, as if by a flick of Stefen's sinister wrist, to a force of nightmare. _Part of him's impressed_ , she suspected darkly. _Not every day one of the younglings turns your world upside down like that. But when it happens, it's usually Stef._

"I can't say I'd like seeing that power in _anyone_ ," said Chadran. "But it's all the more concerning given that Stefen's so young and so..." His mouth curled in an expression of discontent, and it was all Breda could do not to punch it. _Because he's not highborn, you mean? Because he's not 'one of us'? Because that Gift kept him alive when he was a child?_ As if the highborn apprentices weren't awful enough to the few commoners who somehow found the resources to learn music in childhood - seeing the Circle close ranks against Stefen wasn't something she would stand for.

She struggled to find words that wouldn't infuriate him even more, and eventually gave up. "Hellfire, Chadran. You're talking about punishing him and making him suffer because he can do something that spooks the hides off us. And of _course_ it does. Seeing a lot of destructive power, even _emotionally_ destructive power, is just naturally damn scary. But it's not his fault that he was born with that power and he picked exactly the right moment to learn to use it. He doesn't need punishment. He needs us to give him some damned guidance, which means figuring out what the hell we're going to _do_ with this in the future."

"Nothing," said Dellar firmly. "This mustn't happen again."

"Nothing except at the orders of the King," amended Treven, and oh _gods_ but of _course_ the politically inexperienced future-tense king had had to go kick open _that_ door. In return he caught several worried looks, and he twitched defensively. "Breda said it - he was born with that power. For all we know, that happened for a reason, and it may not be through with us yet."

"But _anything_ he does with it will reflect on _all_ of us," Dellar reproached him. "You can't ask your allies to regard Bards as neutral envoys and unofficial diplomats if they know he can do that, and your enemies will do worse. It would be the end of Bardic immunity." _They'd treat us like Heralds_ , Breda thought grimly. _Which we're not. But still. It wouldn't be meaningfully unfair._

"We've allies who are wary of all forms of Mind-Magic," Tantras reminded him.

"And they're going to look at him and realise why." Dara added grimly.

"Why would they know?" Coming from Joshel, that was an incisive question - he was said to have a pretty fine grasp on what Valdemar's enemies did and didn't know. "I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I couldn't really _believe_ this until I heard it -" There was a collective wince at its lingering echo. "It's not something people will sing songs about, or tell credible stories. No one's experienced it except for a few Guardsmen in an isolated region, and us. It's not too late to classify the whole issue."

Shavri frowned. "And can we deal with having a, a rumoured superweapon?"

"The rumour mill will turn a damn sight harder if you censure him than if you don't," Dara pointed out. "Toss him out and he'll, uh, do as them outside the tent do, if you catch my metaphor."

Staggeringly tactful. Chadran coloured to the point where Breda thought he might actually explode. "That _can't_ be a reason to let him off the hook."

 _Old boy, this is politics now. You ought to leave the moralising to the Heralds._ "Chadran, we're grappling with the unfamiliar here, and if we can't make head nor tail of it between us I don't see why you would expect Stef to have perfect vision either. There's no cause to use the words of the code against someone whose heart was in the right place. He _said_ he hated the bloodshed, and in a war who has a choice?" She sighed, exasperated. "What would you have had him do?"

"Just say," hazarded Tantras, "that he'd come up with this months ago and asked Randale to authorise it for use in urgent infiltration and rescue missions. Really, does Randale have a problem with this?"

Shavri looked back at him frostily. "This is why we _have_ a King - to _make_ those decisions about what we're prepared to to with our power in what circumstances. Randale would have a problem with _someone else_ assuming that authority."

"So what would you have had him do?" Breda repeated, and Shavri looked at her hands.

Treven was willing to meet her eyes, and his were full of thoughts. "Presumptive or no, I won't vote to punish one judgement call made in a crisis. We need people who can think and reason in extremis, using what they have. In the moment, it was a decision that only Stef could have made, and if he hadn't..." He trailed off, shaking his head at the thought.

Joshel nodded agreement. It didn't take long for all eyes to fall on Dara, who seemed to be the only one among the eight of them who was ready to tilt either which way - erratically, as she was wont - and she blinked a few times in the unexpected (but never unwelcome) limelight. "Can't say I want to be in the same world with that thing, but Breda was right - it's not _his_ fault he's got hold of an unusual way to help people."

_Unusual? So it all ends with Dara making a rare understatement. I can breathe again now._

"So I see we're at a consensus," said Shavri. One she didn't share in, but was fair enough to acknowledge. "It happened. We don't like it, but we'd sooner rule a circumstantial exception than punish him." Breda heard an audible sigh of relief and was a little surprised to realise that it came from Treven. _Poor damn kid, must be petrified at the thought of crossing Vanyel._ Breda had occasionally had to to sit on the King's Council in Dellar's stead, and had very quickly learned to feel sorry for anyone who provoked Van into a public verbal brawl. "He deserves to hear that verdict as soon as possible, so I suggest that for now we impose a total moratorium on the offensive use of his Gift. If we ever want to carve out any general exceptions to that, we can do so at a later time." She didn't sound happy, but Breda had the odd sense that this was where Shavri had wanted the deliberations to end - she simply couldn't bring herself to be the one who offered him mercy. "Dara, would you call Bard Stefen back in?"

Dara rose without a word amid the forest of politely raised eyebrows - her seat was closest to the door, but it was favour above protocol; the King's Own was _the herald_ and such humble gestures were rightfully in her remit. But Shavri was visibly bowed, in body and politic, not able to grapple with the new while such support was demanded of her by the withering. Small wonder she had no mercy left to give.

 

"So, how do you think that -"

"You're fucked," Medren told him straight. "Least, if Shavri rides on the whole deliberations the way she did with you, you're so fucked." Stef nodded slightly, frowning, betraying about as much interest as he might have if Medren had been speculatively cloudreading, rather than describing the immanent end of his career. _What's he going to do - go live with the wolves?_ "What is _up_ with her, anyway? Still grudging at you over leaving?"

"I gather I didn't grovel enough to her about it when I got back." 

_Oh, you don't say. If you were anything like as much of a prick as you've been with everyone at Bardic..._ He looked, futilely, for anything to it beyond Stefen's lingering and arrogant distraction. Any hint of human feeling. "Aren't you mad at her?"

"No?" Stef looked shocked, almost offended. "With what she's giving up for Randale, she's every right to expect other people to give their all too. She's got so damned little left that she deserves a few sacrifices. But I couldn't stay, and that offended her. I can't be mad at her for undermining me, but I also can't be sorry for starting it all by walking away -"

"Because you're so damn sure you did the right thing." Medren fell into one of the anteroom's unpleasant chairs, glaring up at the still-living mortal remains of what had once been his best friend, who had at times almost been a sane person.

Stef just kept circling the room, thumbs slipped lazily in his belt. "I shouldn't have told them that, should I?"

"No!" Medren replied firmly, still in shock at the lapse of Stefen's usually unerring human judgement - but his friend merely shrugged. _Oh gods and hellfire, you really_ don't _care._ You _know you did the right thing and you know it was something not a one of them could do or even_ think _of. And you couldn't stand there before them and not_ tell _them you knew it._

Whatever thin veils of humility Stefen had ever worn over what he had, what he was - his Giftedness, his ambition, his humanity or lack thereof - had been torn away. That what lay beneath it was mad went without saying; but it was also blindlingly _true_. Brilliant and undeniable.

And a complete fucking idiot. 

"You have _got_ to stop doing this to people, you damn fool," he growled, despairing that Stef would even listen.

"Stop doing what?" asked Stef absently.

"Fucksticks, there you go again. You used to listen when people talked, you know? Especially people you needed on _your_ side." Stef paused in his pacing, arms falling defensively open. "Are you not even _looking_ at yourself lately? You're acting like someone who's totally lost the damn plot, and there's not a soul who hasn't noticed, and it's scaring us. It's scaring _me_."

Stef opened and closed his mouth a few times and then stepped forward and fell into the chair next to Medren's. "Really?" he said, dismal. "I've been a bit preoccupied, but -"

"Fucking _lifebonds_ , Stef. You've been completely _obsessed_ over him to the point of openly not giving a shit for anything that's actually in front of you where you can deal with it. What the hell happened? You weren't a _tenth_ this bad when he went to Rethwallen."

Stef stared at the floor, and his face was pale and empty. "I wasn't so worried about him then."

"Worried? He's got a whole army up there to take care of the enemy stragglers, why would you be worried?" Stef swallowed audibly hard, not replying or even looking up at him. "Come on, what the hell could go wrong?"

"He's been hurt," he said quietly. "I should be with him, but..." 

He broke off, and Medren thought he was maybe, possibly, holding back tears. He nudged Stef lightly. "Really now. He's been hurt a few times before, you know? And he and the Healers up there said that Randi needed you more urgently than he did -" 

Stef's face darkened. "He decided he didn't want me around him -"

"Stef. You're _lifebonded_. He'll be all over you again just as soon as he gets another chance, and if he isn't, then I'll tell him not to be such a damned ass to you." Stefen looked doubtful to the point of petulance, and Medren nudged him harder. "And you know he'd tell you that he's a shitty reason to set the backs up of two Circles."

"I did, didn't I?" Stef actually looked despondent now, though probably more in criticism for his own poor performance than the potential consequences.

"Yeah. You did." Medren sighed, honestly pitying his tactless friend. "They don't know what to do with you, and blatantly not caring for their authority isn't going to help them feel better about that."

Stef shrugged awkwardly. "I'm just...me. How hard can it be for them to -"

"Well, let's see. You've used your Gift in a way no one knew was even real, you've just committed to Circle minutes the fact that you're sleeping with a man who could level Haven with his mind, and you don't give an evident crap what they think about either of those things. You stopped an invading army by singing at it and now you're friends with a clan of wolves. I can't imagine why you worry them." Medren leaned back, rocking the flimsy chair. "I swear, you and my uncle deserve each other, the things you do to people. Look to him, why don't you? He's been damn careful for years about how he handles all the folks who are scared of him - you better do the same, or you're sunk."

"Assuming I'm not already sunk," observed Stef. "Right. I'll think about that. Thank you," he added. "I really hadn't realised -"

The door swung open again. Dara looked at them and beckoned for them to return; she shook her head as they filed back into the Council room, as if in despair at all young Bards ever.

Stef stood before them at attention; Medren remained by the door, feeling his heart quiver low in his stomach. "Bard Stefen," said Shavri as Dara returned to her seat. "We have decided against charging you for misusing the Bardic Gift, due to the exceptional circumstances involved. We are also placing a total moritorium on the use of that Gift offensively, and we wish you to understand that any activation of it except under threat to your _own_ life or under specific orders from the monarch is considered proscribed and _will_ be punished." Medren leaned back on the door, fearing his feet wouldn't support him alone. _Oh gods, Stef, you owe me a drink for putting me through that. You owe me a whole damn bottle and it better be a good one._ Stefen hadn't moved an inch, but his breathing seemed to have quickened in relief. "If we make any further deliberations on the use of this power, you'll be invited to join them. Until then we are classifying all knowledge of it and I expect you - both of you -" she indicated Medren too, "- to keep your knowledge of it to yourselves, for the sake of all Bards and all of Valdemar. For now, you are free to leave this hearing without charge or censure."

Stef bowed to her and mumbled a thanks over the shifting of overstressed Councillors leaving their seats, and he stumbled straight out the door when Medren opened it. He threw his right arm about Stef's shoulders in the anteroom, clapping his back soundly. "You got lucky, you bastard," he muttered.

A moment later, he felt another arm cross his from Stefen's right. "No, you got _me_. And a few other wise heads who like you for some damnable reason. Want to come back to mine for a drink, lads?"

Stef smiled sheepishly at Breda, and nodded hard enough for both of them. "Please. Might have to steal some of your writing-paper, though," he added in a whisper.

"Huh, what now?"

"You heard Shavri. I'm a proscribed weapon, and I simply have to tell Vanyel before anyone else does."

Breda stared at him longsufferingly. "Stef, I'm just glad the pair of you are on _our_ side."


End file.
